#unless you're into skinning rabbits and bad tea

[recurring-polynya]

BLEACH Anime Celebration

Day 1 Prompt: The Rain A character is concerned for one or more characters The character/s get caught in the rain Features something sweet or bitter A character shares something with another character

Characters: Renji, Fujimaru, Kosaburou, Mameji, and, of course, Rukia

Rating: General audiences, contains child rudeness.

| ao3 | ff.net |

☔ 🍵 💕

“Renji,” said Fujimaru, “are you worried?”

“No,” said Renji.

“It’s getting dark,” said Fujimaru, watching Renji poke the fire. “It’ll get cold after the sun goes down and they’ve been out in the rain.”

“Rukia said they would be back by dark,” Kosaburou chipped in. “So they’ll probably be back very soon!” He was sitting away from the open hearth at the center of their hut, trying to weave dried straw into a raincoat, the way Rukia had shown them. She was clever at things like that, but so far, she’d only had time to make them for herself and Mameji, the two smallest of them. Fujimaru had been helping earlier, but he’d evidently gotten tired of it and come over to bother Renji, instead.

“What if they don’t, though?” Fujimaru wrinkled his nose. Renji could tell the other boy wanted a turn with the fire-poking stick, but he was trying to get some water to boil, and that was never gonna happen if Fujimaru knocked the hot coals all over the place like he always did. “Would you go out after them, Renji? I would go with you.”

“Not if I can help it,” Renji grumbled. “Rukia knows these woods a lot better than we do. If we go out stumbling around in the dark and the rain, she’s just gonna get home and then have to go out again and find our sorry asses.”

“Are you gonna cook rice, Renji?” Kosaburou asked. “That would be nice, for Rukia and Mameji to have hot rice when they get home.”

“The whole reason they went out was to check the snares!” Renji reminded him. “The rice’ll last a while, no point in wasting it if there’s fresh meat coming.” He paused. “If they come home empty-handed, and Rukia’s hungry, I’ll make the rice.” He paused again. “I’m makin’ tea.”

Fujimaru made a grumbling sound deep in his throat, and pulled his knees up to his chest.

Renji would have liked to be more reassuring, but he honestly didn’t know what he could say.

Was he worried? Of course he was worried. Renji did not like to think of himself as a guy who worried. He considered things and weighed probabilities and made back-up plans, but he didn’t worry. Well, he didn’t used to. Then, a late summer storm named Rukia had roared into his peaceful little existence, and upset everything.

Rukia existed on an entirely different wavelength from his own. Rukia did not consider things, she just did them. If her actions had consequences, that certainly wasn’t any of her business. She never talked about her past, but she’d been in Inuzuri for a long time, and knew all its rhythms and riptides. Renji sometimes wondered if she was maybe part yokai, like if he could look fast enough while she wasn’t paying attention, he might catch her casting a fox’s shadow instead of a girl’s. Rukia sought no one’s counsel, least of all his, and cared even less for his concerns.

If she had maintained her distance, none of this would bother Renji in the least. In fact, at least within the confines of his own head, he had to admit that he rather admired her, and if he had the luxury of doing so from afar, he had to admit he’d probably be down pretty bad for her.

The problem was that Rukia, for reasons Renji had yet to discern, had attached herself to their little gang, and thrown the entire dynamic into disarray. Renji didn’t care what Rukia did, but the other boys adored her, and so he now found himself subject to the ever-shifting tides of her whimsy. He still wasn’t sure how, a few weeks ago, she had convinced them all to move out to this ramshackle hut she’d found in the woods a few spirit-miles outside of town-proper. Renji had lived in Inuzuri-town for as long as he’d been dead, and felt completely out of his element here in the quiet and dripping woods. If Rukia wanted to go out traipsing around in the rain and take Mameji with her, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it, aside from stay at home and make a fire.

At least the squat had a usable hearth. Renji had stayed in places that had them before, but he’d never gotten to be in charge of one before. Usually he and the boys got shunted off to some drafty corner, while the biggest and meanest kids took over management of the heating conditions and any cooking that might be going on. Getting hot water had always required waiting your turn and also some amount of bowing and scraping and possibly receiving a wet willie or some other form of puerile abuse. Feeling a slight pang of conscience, Renji resolved to give Fujimaru a turn with the poking stick as soon as he got the water boiling.

For a few minutes, the three of them sat without speaking. The rain pounded against the thatch of the roof, making dribbly noises in the gap at the bottom of the door that Renji had already made a note to fix. Kosaburou’s straw made little rustling sounds. Renji’s coals hissed and popped. Fujimaru sighed and blew his hair out of his face.

Kosaburou suddenly perked up. “I think I hear something! I bet they’re back!”

“I think it’s just this water finally coming to a boil,” Renji scowled at the kettle judgmentally.

“No, it’s outside,” Kosaburou insisted.

Abruptly, the door slammed open. “GET A LOAD OF THIS HARE WE GOT!”

Renji jumped half out of his own skin, but fortunately, everyone else was too busy mobbing the two tiny, sopping figures who had just stepped inside.

“Wow, Rukia, it’s huge!”

“Can we all have some? Is there enough?”

“Yeah, of course! Mameji found some mushrooms, too, we’ll make a whole feast!”

“What does Mameji know about mushrooms? I’m not eating any mushrooms Mameji found!”

“I showed ‘em to Rukia first! She said they’re called ‘dancing mushrooms’, and they’re good to eat!”

“Make Renji look at ‘em!”

“I don’t know crap about mushrooms,” Renji grumbled, wrapping a rag around his hand so he could take the kettle off the fire. “And take yer raincoats off, you’re making puddles in the house!”

Mameji immediately began peeling off his rain gear, but Rukia strode to the center of the room and held up her prize for Renji’s inspection. Renji paused from stirring up a bowl of powdered tea long enough to look carefully. It was an adolescent buck, long-limbed, but lean at a time of year when it should have been putting on fat for the winter.

“Nice,” Renji declared with a curt nod. “Take care when you skin it. I know a guy down at the tanner’s who’ll give us a few kan for the hide.” For all her savvy at navigating the idiosyncrasies of Inuzuri, Rukia had somewhat of an aversion to what little above-board economy existed. She tended to avoid dealing with people whenever possible, and if she regarded Renji as good for anything at all (unlikely), it was for his man-about-town connections.

Rukia returned the nod. “Sorry we took so long.” She turned her head back to address the other boys who were busy admiring the mushrooms. “The main trail is completely washed out just north of where the creek curves around that big boulder. I showed Mameji how to get over it, but don’t try going that way without him or me, it’s a giant, slippery mudpit.”

“Okay, Rukia!”

“Sure thing!”

Rukia turned back to Renji. “You starving? I can skin this right away and we can get it cooking. Nice job on the fire, by the way.”

“I’m not that hungry,” Renji shrugged. This was only partially a lie. Renji was always hungry. In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t anywhere close to how hungry he could get. He glanced at her hand, bony knuckles under pale skin as she held the hare up by its back legs. “You should warm up first. You’ll cut yourself if you try to dress a rabbit with bare hands.” He scowled. “Or I could do it. If you’re starving.”

Rukia raised one eyebrow. “Do you know how to dress a rabbit?”

Renji wrinkled his nose. “Not…the correct way. I could get the meat out. If I had to.”

Rukia regarded him for a long moment, then set the hare down and started to untie her rain gear. “I’m not starving either,” she said. “I’ll do it after my hands warm up. I’ll teach you, if you’re interested.”

Renji made a noncommittal noise.

“You can show me, Rukia!” Mameji announced. “I want to learn!”

“Me, too!” Kosaburou added. “I’m not afraid of rabbit guts!” This was extremely a lie, but the relief of having the gang back home again, safe and in one piece had put Renji in a very generous mood, so he didn’t say anything.

“Me, three!” Fujimaru was not to be left out.

“Mameji, your tea’s up,” Renji called.

“Thanks, Renji!” Mameji said, propped his straw cape up to dry near the door.

Renji plunked a second steaming bowl onto the floor next to Rukia’s feet. “Here,” he said. “Take off your raincoat and drink it. Fujimaru, Kosaburou, you guys want tea?”

“Yes, please!” Kosaburou chorused.

“Yeah, sure,” Fujimaru agreed.

Rukia divested herself of her rain coat while Renji poured a few more bowls of tea and passed them around. Slowly, she sat down in the spot between Renji and Fujimaru. She picked up her tea bowl and examined it, turning it carefully with her tiny, pale fingers. “This is pretty,” she finally said. It wasn’t, really. It was the same heavy, grayish-brown pottery that was ubiquitous throughout Inuzuri. It did, at least, have a curl of dainty little flowers painted in dark blue around the rim.

“Take care with that, it’s yours now,” Renji informed her, taking a sip. His own cup had a little fish on it. He was almost certain he had owned a cup with a fish on it when he was alive. A koi, just like in his name.

“You lift this just for me, Abarai?” Rukia asked, her voice dripping with fake tenderness.

“Something like that,” Renji muttered. “People should have cups.” He wasn’t about to admit he’d spent actual kan on it, but he’d wanted to take the time to pick one out, and the pottery seller down at the market had been watching him like a hawk.

“Don’t drink it yet, Rukia!” Kosaburou suddenly waved a hand at her. “It’s too hot, it’ll burn your tongue.”

Rukia’s eyes slid over to Renji. He took a long, slow sip of his.

“There’s something wrong with him,” Fujimaru insisted. “He drinks it way too hot.”

“There’s lots wrong with him, actually, but we like him anyway,” Mameji giggled.

“Shut up,” Renji replied good-naturedly.

“I’ve never actually had tea before,” Rukia admitted, her fingers slowly warming to pink as she wiggled them against the cup.

“It’s not actually tea,” Renji quickly pointed out. “It’s herbal stuff.” Nobody had actual tea in Inuzuri.

“Renji and I help the old herb lady set up her stall on market days, and she gives it to us,” Kosaburou explained proudly.

“It’s kind of terrible,” Fujimaru conceded, sniffing at the steam of his.

“I like it!” Kosaburou argued.

“It’s bracing,” Mameji declared.

“It keeps off the choking cough,” Renji snapped. “We don’t need any of that around here, so we drink this when we come in from the cold. That’s the rule.”

It’s not that Renji actually believed in the medicinal power of the tea. But two years prior, choking cough had swept the slums and taken out probably a third of the children that prowled the town’s fringes like rats. Mameji had gotten it pretty bad and to this day, wheezed a bit in the lungs when the weather turned cold. The old herb lady was so old that she sometimes seemed to go transparent around the edges (Kosaburou said Renji should probably try to get more sleep) and forgot what she was doing most of the time, but it’s not like there were many better options, and Renji figured it was better than doing nothing. To be honest, he rather liked the tea, which he had come to associate with the vague notion of being home, even if home was more a sense of having your people around you than an actual place. A few times, they’d managed to get ahold of some honey, which Renji had another half-baked human memory of being good for colds. It cut the bitterness of the tea almost entirely, made it downright pleasant.

Renji realized that Rukia was watching him carefully over the rim of her tea bowl. She did that a lot--watched him, that is. He didn’t know why. All the other boys spent half the day trying to get her attention, and all she ever did was stare at him, like he was some weird clockwork contraption she couldn’t quite figure out.

Renji nudged the poking stick over to Fujimaru. “Oi, Fujimaru, if you aren’t drinking your tea, stir the coals around a bit, would you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Fujimaru agreed enthusiastically.

Rukia finally lowered her eyes, her lips pursing like a kiss as she blew on her tea. She took a slow, cautious sip. “Oh!”

“Burn yourself?” Renji asked gruffly.

“Hm? Oh, no! It just didn’t taste like I expected it to. It surprised me.” She turned a pretty smile on Mameji. “‘Bracing’ was a good word for it.”

“Pretty sure Renji brews it at about four times the strength you’re supposed to,” Fujimaru, lordly with the power of his poking stick, announced.

“No one got the cough last year, did they?” Renji retorted.

“I like it,” Rukia interrupted. “It’s good.” Then she took another sip, long and luxurious.

Kosaburou took a tentative sip and immediately gave up, blowing on it some more instead.

“I can show you how to make it, if you want,” Renji said off-handedly, figuring that would put them even again for the rabbit thing.

“I guess,” Rukia replied, “but I kinda like it when you do it.”